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Play Fairway Analysis FOA Selections

The Geothermal Technologies Office announced up to $4 million for eleven projects nationwide. Play Fairway Analysis, a subsurface mapping technique already used for oil and gas exploration, identifies prospective geothermal resources in areas with no obvious surface expression. This is done by detecting and plotting underground heat, permeability, and fluid to discover where all three are most likely to be present together. Eleven awards of up to $500,000 each will apply this analysis technique to help pinpoint where geothermal energy resources remain hidden beneath the Earth’s surface. Selected projects will study diverse territories across the United States – from as far west as Alaska’s Aleutian Islands chain and Hawaii, to the Cascade Range of Oregon, the Great Basin in Utah, the Rio Grande rift zone, and eastward to the Appalachian Basin in the mid-Atlantic region, where lower temperature geothermal resources could be tapped in the future. The resulting regional, basin-scale maps will serve to quantify and reduce uncertainty for geothermal energy exploration. By improving success rates for exploration drilling, play fairway analysis could significantly lower the costs of geothermal energy while opening up new areas to development. Click below for more specific project information on play fairway analysis selections.